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igenlodeDespite several days of sub-zero temperatures, the pink Linara is still flowering.... (Doesn't it know it's supposed to be in the middle of the winter?)
A couple more of the kale plants have bitten the dust, however, and one of the beetroots -- I didn't really need three anyway.
The very belated honesty seedling is still alive, although it is now sharing its pot with a self-seeded orange poppy -- despite my concerns earlier this year, I am now able to distinguish them from the red field poppies on foliage and growing habit alone :-)
The garlic is growing very enthusiastically, as is one of the new batch of spring onion stubs that I planted up from the greengrocer's salad after the old ones died. The others all got frosted, I think; it doesn't help that their roots seem very exposed. It was hard to plant them deep enough as they had a dense mat of long root underneath, and a lot of the surface soil evidently got compacted/washed away subsequently :-(
My alarm clock now seems to be working reliably again, thank goodness, since I took the brown tape off it and poked around at its innards -- I didn't see anything wrong, but apparently taking the battery out and putting it back in again cured the problem. Presumably it had got knocked loose enough to reduce the supply of power so that it was sufficient to keep ticking but not necessarily to run the extra demand created by the alarm going off.
One unexpected side-effect of repeatedly wearing two pairs of socks to ward off further chilblains is that I now have a sore on the inside of my chilblained toe where it was, presumably, being pressed harder against its neighbour (and the corner of the toenail there) than usual :-( Or maybe it was just that the skin was already damaged, and the extra chafing caused by slightly tighter shoes was too much. At any rate I am now reduced to using a corn ring to keep the toes apart!
I have evolved a trick of only half-emptying my hot-water-bottle before adding water from the kettle, thus ensuring that it is not ever hot enough to burn -- originally I was just pouring half the water back into the kettle to re-boil it, but unsurprisingly this repeated evaporation started to magnify the usual limescale problems no end! Of course you are not supposed to add actually boiling water to a rubber bottle anyway, but I never waited all that long before adding it and never had any trouble with them perishing (I do wonder how much longer this 'long' Yuyu bottle will last, as I know I've had it for ten years or so at this point).
At any rate this also has the desirable effect of reducing the boiling time, since the kettle need only be half-full, and presumably reducing the amount of energy used accordingly.
A couple more of the kale plants have bitten the dust, however, and one of the beetroots -- I didn't really need three anyway.
The very belated honesty seedling is still alive, although it is now sharing its pot with a self-seeded orange poppy -- despite my concerns earlier this year, I am now able to distinguish them from the red field poppies on foliage and growing habit alone :-)
The garlic is growing very enthusiastically, as is one of the new batch of spring onion stubs that I planted up from the greengrocer's salad after the old ones died. The others all got frosted, I think; it doesn't help that their roots seem very exposed. It was hard to plant them deep enough as they had a dense mat of long root underneath, and a lot of the surface soil evidently got compacted/washed away subsequently :-(
My alarm clock now seems to be working reliably again, thank goodness, since I took the brown tape off it and poked around at its innards -- I didn't see anything wrong, but apparently taking the battery out and putting it back in again cured the problem. Presumably it had got knocked loose enough to reduce the supply of power so that it was sufficient to keep ticking but not necessarily to run the extra demand created by the alarm going off.
One unexpected side-effect of repeatedly wearing two pairs of socks to ward off further chilblains is that I now have a sore on the inside of my chilblained toe where it was, presumably, being pressed harder against its neighbour (and the corner of the toenail there) than usual :-( Or maybe it was just that the skin was already damaged, and the extra chafing caused by slightly tighter shoes was too much. At any rate I am now reduced to using a corn ring to keep the toes apart!
I have evolved a trick of only half-emptying my hot-water-bottle before adding water from the kettle, thus ensuring that it is not ever hot enough to burn -- originally I was just pouring half the water back into the kettle to re-boil it, but unsurprisingly this repeated evaporation started to magnify the usual limescale problems no end! Of course you are not supposed to add actually boiling water to a rubber bottle anyway, but I never waited all that long before adding it and never had any trouble with them perishing (I do wonder how much longer this 'long' Yuyu bottle will last, as I know I've had it for ten years or so at this point).
At any rate this also has the desirable effect of reducing the boiling time, since the kettle need only be half-full, and presumably reducing the amount of energy used accordingly.